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PowerBI reports and dashboard on-premise hosting

As per available documentation, power bi reports and dashboards will be published to microsoft cloud. It is very awesome approach as it saves all overhead of maintaining infrastructure. But there are case where on-premise hosting is required, Can we configure on-premise server to host power bi reports just like SSRS reports?

With Power BI Report Server now generally available (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/report-server/), we’re marking this idea completed. I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for participating in this community over the past few months and taking time out of your busy days to try the previews and share your feedback; I can’t overemphasize how much we appreciate it and how much it contributes to the product.

While the June 2017 release supports Power BI reports that connect “live” to Analysis Services, we’re hard at work on integrating the Power Query/M-language and Analysis Services/DAX engines to unlock direct connectivity to the other Power BI Desktop data sources, targeted for later this (calendar) year.

A couple of key things to know:
- This Technical Preview is a pre-configured Virtual Machine in the Azure Marketplace. The VM includes everything you need, even sample reports and data, making it quick and easy to give it a try. We wanted to offer it to you while we continue to work toward a preview you can download and install in your own on-premises environment.
- This preview supports Power BI reports that connect “live” to Analysis Services models – both Tabular and Multidimensional (cubes). We plan to extend support to additional data sources in a future preview.

Your feedback about this and future technical previews will help our progress toward production-ready functionality and reliability, so give it a try and send us your feedback!

Two specific goals of that roadmap:
- Step 1, in SSRS 2016: Provide an on-premises solution for mobile BI by adding Mobile Reports (built on the Datazen technology we recently acquired) to SSRS.
- Step 2, after SSRS 2016: Provide an on-premises solution for self-service BI. Power View was a first step in 2012, but we want to provide a solution that works across modern browsers and mobile devices (read: doesn’t require Silverlight) and that doesn’t necessarily require SharePoint.

About that “on-premises solution for self-service BI:” We’re enabling you to publish a Power BI Desktop report to an on-premises report server and view it in a web browser. With SSRS 2016, you can already do the first part: upload PBIX files to SSRS, manage permissions (who can see/download them, who can update/delete them, etc.), and individual users can Favorite them – essentially a nicer alternative to a network share for these files. Currently, clicking a PBIX file does open it in Power BI Desktop, but this is merely an incremental step on the path to enabling in-browser viewing.

We’ve made and continue to make good progress toward that roadmap:
- In June 2016, we delivered Step 1 (on-premises mobile BI) in SSRS 2016.
- Since then, we’ve been actively working on Step 2 (on-premises self-service BI).
- In September, at Microsoft Ignite, we showed the first sneak peek of the progress we’ve made. We demoed viewing and interacting with a Power BI Desktop report in a web browser, completely on-premises. Watch the demo: https://youtu.be/gkOG9HxRpZs?t=58m4s.
- Our next major event is PASS Summit, October 25-28, where we hope to share our latest progress toward a public preview.

Two specific goals of that roadmap:
- Step 1, in SQL 2016 RTM: Provide an on-premises solution for mobile BI by adding Mobile Reports (built on the Datazen technology we recently acquired) to SSRS.
- Step 2, after SQL 2016 RTM: Provide an on-premises solution for self-service BI. Power View was a first step in 2012, but we want to provide a solution that works across modern browsers and mobile devices (read: doesn’t require Silverlight) and that doesn’t necessarily require SharePoint.

Having delivered on Step 1 in SSRS 2016, we’ve now started on Step 2.

About that “on-premises solution for self-service BI:” We plan to enable you to publish a Power BI Desktop report to an on-premises report server and view it in a browser. With SSRS 2016, you can already do the first part: upload PBIX files to SSRS, manage permissions (who can see/download them, who can update/delete them, etc.), and individual users can Favorite them – essentially a nicer alternative to a network share for these files. Currently, clicking a PBIX file does open it in Power BI Desktop, but this is merely an incremental step on the path to enabling in-browser viewing.

We don’t yet have a more specific release timeframe, but we’re actively working on this functionality.

When the June-2017 release happens, I really hope that this will still be called SQL Server (SSRS) 2016. If there is any change to this, all our plans to use this feature will go into a tailspin, becoz then it is another long winded process of getting a new version approved internally.

@dmnc, thanks for asking. Probably just a terminology issue. Power BI uses the term "dashboard" to refer to a specific feature in the Power BI service that enables you to "pin" or collect visuals from various Power BI reports, Excel workbooks, or even web content, on a "dashboard" for monitoring. You can't create these dashboards in Power BI Desktop, so they're outside the scope of what we're integrating into Reporting Services.

Power BI uses the term "report" to describe the file you create in Power BI Desktop, so we're enabling you to view Power BI *reports* in Reporting Services. Now, you might look at a particular Power BI report and say, "That's a dashboard!" -- it's a bunch of visuals on a screen -- and in that more general sense of the term, absolutely, you can view "dashboard-style" Power BI reports in Reporting Services.

We are currently considering Power BI as a Reporting/Dash boarding tool option. However I find Henk Kroese comment concerning, I was under the impression that power BI desktop was used to create reports and dashboards and that previously these reports and dashboards could only be deployed to the cloud. I thought that the subject of this discussion was enabling said reporting that is created with power BI desktop to be deployed to SSRS on premise, so that all users can view and interact with these reports or dash boards through their web browser just like normal SSRS reports without having to have a copy of power BI desktop installed on their machine. Henk Kroese says dashboards on premise is missing? Why would it be missing either you can or can't deploy power bi desktop generated files to SSRS, weather it's a dashboard or a detailed report what does it matter? Are there separate components being talked about here? I guess I want to confirm if the changes being made with a view to be able to deploy any power BI desktop files too SSRS on premise so that all these files can be viewed through the browser, not the power BI desktop client tool. thanks in advance for the clarification.

While this is a great step forward, it is a little too late. Our company was ready to be all in with an MS Analytics offering, and we use SSIS , SSRS, and SSAS daily. But the part that has been lacking is the need for a good dashboard capability. We have been trying to hold off others for Power BI to come on premise, but with the announcement that it is not going to come in any form for SQL Server 2016 and even at that, will not have the dashboard hosting capability.. we have lost the battle. We are currently upgrading to SQL Server 2016, as we are a large corporation and upgrades don't happen over night. Tableau now has a strong hold and continues to grow. While I have used Power BI for testing out a few things, and find it much easier to use than Tableau, it is too late.
While making capabilities available in the cloud is faster, easier.. I think it leaves a lot of big companies out because they can not put their data in the cloud, and in the end MS will not be the tool of choice because we are forced to use other products because the functionality is not available on prem. It is a shame.

@koen, assume I have ssas 2012, now Microsoft will release this new SSRS, if it is a standalone, with a reasonable pricing, then sweet we can use it with the existing SSAS, otherwise another battle with IT to upgrade the whole thing ?

This is ridiculous... I work for an organization where hosting data in the cloud is simply not possible. Unfortunately our senior executive in charge of BI technology bought into the MS sales pitch two years ago with the promise that there would be an on-premise solution by now. Therefore I am forced to use Powerview and SSRS which are very weak offerings. Thank goodness that my team has become proficient in Python and R because Shiny and Plotly provide much better visualization solutions for the premises.

Any Word on technical Preview Release in January. We would really like to get some on premise demo's going to generate some excitement about Power BI release in the summer. Is January release still on the table?

Thanks for the hard work on this one guys, this is a huge step forward for Microsoft BI adoption for non cloud able organizations(More than you would think).

We would like to be able to use Power BI for our business but our data contains a lot of personal information. Some of this is private too so uploading to the Cloud isn't an option. I have given this three votes but only because I'm not allowed to give it 50 :)

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